In around 1995, I and a couple of friends at my posh private girls’ school wrote a play retelling Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I played Sir Gawain, a friend played the Green Knight, another played King Arthur and a fourth played The Mouse. The Mouse character was added in because we wanted to sell this to the school administration as a special performance for the kindergarten kids and a talking mouse seemed a convincing argument that it was child-friendly. They agreed and we put it on. The Green Knight was played by the second-tallest girl in class, as the tallest was a terrible actress. She wore a basketball covered in a horrific green-haired witch’s mask perched on top of a rickety cardboard ring balanced on her head. When I whipped out my lightsabre and beheaded the Green Knight, the head flew off and bounced into the crowd, causing mass hysteria amongst the preschoolers. The teacher glared at us balefully and spent the rest of the morning calming them down. The play was a hit, but there is a generation of women in Lahore who may decide not to watch this movie.
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